Volleyball: McHenry hires Kyle Hobson as volleyball coach

Kyle Hobson figured her high school volleyball coaching career was over.

In 2005, Hobson stepped down as Richmond-Burton’s coach after she gave birth to her daughter, Mollie. Hobson, an assistant principal at McHenry High School for the last 11 years, stayed in coaching with Club Fusion in McHenry County and VC United in Rockford.

But when former McHenry coach Hillary Agnello left this summer for a dean’s job at Crystal Lake South, Hobson was ready to step in.

McHenry athletic director Chris Madson announced Hobson as the new coach on a one-year interim basis on Thursday. Hobson will get to coach Mollie, an opposite side hitter who will play at NCAA Division II St. Cloud State next year, for this one season.

“I absolutely thought that [I was done with high school],” Hobson said. “I’m really excited to be back out on the court, working with a team of girls and getting them to learn more and improve and hopefully compete at the highest level we can in the Fox Valley.

“It was kind of a mutual coming together. I worked with Chris a little bit to find a coach. Then it just wasn’t working out. I was like, ‘I can do this if you need me to.’ I was really happy it turned out the way that it did. These last three or four days in the gym has turned out pretty awesome.”

Hobson graduated from Harvard in 1993 and played at West Virginia. She coached one season at Harvard, then eight at R-B before concentrating on the classroom and getting into administration. She and her husband, Bill, live in McHenry and also have a son, Owen, who is a sophomore.

“It’s all come full circle,” Hobson said. “It’s an opportunity to coach (my daughter) and get back into volleyball, one of the things I love to do. That’s what it’s about, having some fun and playing some really good volleyball.”

The Warriors are bringing in a whole new staff with Hobson. Isidora Visnjevac, a 2019 McHenry graduate, will be head junior varsity and assistant varsity coach. Kara Baysinger will coach at the sophomore level, and Derek Galvicius will coach the freshmen.

Visnjevac played at Lake Forest College, where she was a team captain for two seasons. Baysinger is the new dean of students at McHenry’s upper campus, and Galvicius has been an assistant football and track and field coach for four years, and has played volleyball most of his life. He became a teacher in D-156 in 2022.